


Persistent

by Freffers



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, this ship will sail if it's the last thing I do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-27 10:37:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8398294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Freffers/pseuds/Freffers
Summary: A midnight encounter on the rooftops of Mantle.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KIBITZER](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KIBITZER/gifts), [kitestrings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitestrings/gifts).



> Guess who finally got inspired. ;)

Winter's landing resonated loud through the corrugated iron like an aftershock. Unbecoming of a light-footed Specialist, but she had been trailing this quarry for too many hours to remember the title she bore. No pause - aura propelled her unnaturally from her crouch and kept her running, heels sending shockwave after shockwave along the length of the metal like thunder before lightning.  
  
Her quarry hardly acknowledged the storm it invited. The chase had been a long one, leaving tell-tale skidmarks and heel-dents in every rusting rooftop industrial Mantle had left to its name. But now the figure had stopped - not from exhaustion; they stood with too much poise for that - at the very far edge of the next building, back turned. That should have been a warning, and perhaps it was intended as one: _I can take you._  
  
The Huntress took from it a different message, vision bound past obsession by the ease in her prey's stance. The way their hand hung loose only inches from the scabbard; the slight, unforced tilt in that same hip; the subtle angling of the head, as if considering the distances between ground and roof like a choice of wines. _Taunting_. Winter was weak to it, always had been.  
  
When her shoes finally met snow-dusted concrete, the figure - the woman - merely turned her head. Any movement more would have been a generosity. Even without the mask the distance would have been too great to see her expression, but the sneer in her voice, just audible beneath Winter's furious approach, made it quite clear enough.  
  
" _Persistent._ "  
  
Winter leapt with a shout, swords primed for the blow. The woman was ready. Hand shot to hilt, the click of a dust chamber, a sudden _red_ \--  
  
White light as Winter fell through her own soul and out again, shooting towards her foe from the other side. But before she could land the hit expectation met blunt reality. Widening eyes took in her foe, directly facing her, in the exact same position as before, body upright and hand on hilt, as if she hadn't moved at all - and behind, the dissipating glyph that had taken her to safety torn completely asunder.  
  
A second of confusion too long. The woman brusquely grabbed Winter's forearm, wheeled and slammed her to the ground. An impossible screech as the too-long scarlet blade ran an arc along the floor, air sparking the colour of Grimm viscera. No chance for recovery - the blade whipped up and without fanfare plunged down. Winter barely rolled out of the way, but the crimson aftershock caught her hair, slicing right through her bun.  
  
Winter's locks came out in a shock of white as she jumped upright, swinging to settle at her chin. Cosmetic. _Lucky_. For one unwise second brain doubted itself, struggled to force comprehension out of the incomprehensible. No part of a Hunter's being was left unprotected by aura, not even dead keratin, but the sword--  
  
_It swung again--_  
  
Winter blinked, realised that she'd successfully blocked the strike with her weapon. Strange; the blade seemed dull now, an ensanguined rather than stellar red. Nonetheless she felt her spirit trembling in her own metal. Whether or not it parted aura, it could certainly wear it thin.  
  
Blow after blow forced her back, and it was all she could do to dodge and block where she could. With every swing the woman left openings, wide ones, confident that her speed was defence enough. Most infuriating of all, she was right. This _machine_ was tireless, leaving Winter no space to cast a hasting and match it, even less to escape the routine it was forcing her to dance.  
  
Winter could tell. The woman knew exactly what she was doing, where each blow would lead her foe, and as soon as she was in position she easily kicked out the helpless Specialist's footing.  
  
On the floor, again, and this time the strike hit true.  
  
The moment metal split tensor time seemed to lengthen, pulling light backwards with it - sky turning red, world becoming shadow - until it hurriedly regained itself, a delayed glyph catapulting Winter across the floor with unexpended energy. She hit the sidewall like a ragdoll. Physical memory of aura sundering replayed once, twice, spirit far more incredulous than body that such a thing were even possible.  
  
But Winter was _built_ a soldier. Aura immediately rushed to the wound, forcing fibre and fascia to knit back together at unnatural speed. That left less for the rest of her.  
  
The woman had sheathed her sword, but had no intention of stopping her assault. She rushed forward to end her weakened prey, hand prepared at the hilt. Winter conjured a simple glyph and prayed that it would manifest before her opponent could unsheathe - and it did, propelling her back. She did not stumble with the landing, but it had given the Specialist enough time to stand upright, the opaque shadow blackening the fabric at her hip the sole indication of the wound she'd sustained.  
  
_This isn't over_. If it wasn't over, that meant she could win.  
  
Golden light lit her from below and the world slowed. She knew not to waste a moment of the temporary effect, understood it wouldn't suffice by itself, and sure enough when she lunged to meet her opponent the woman met every strike. But she was on the defence - for now.  
  
Winter had never fought anyone like this. Not one movement was extraneous or ill-judged, all with the same brutal, _beautiful_ economy of effort. A curious hunger seared Winter's stomach, rose up through her sternum. Hunters, gladiators in a ring of their own making, were trained to slay; this woman knew how to _kill_.  
  
She was equipped for it too. Every swing of that sword left a stain in the air, a black-red glimpse of irreality that for a millisecond threatened to swallow the world whole. _Well_ \- Winter clocked the woman's choice of garb - _she certainly has a -theme-_.  
  
The thought kept envy from taking hold and distracting her. But the hasting was already wearing off, and the only one of the two who appeared to have suffered for the effort was Winter, aura starting to protest quite loudly. Without a boost of some sort she did nothing to her opponent, but _with_ one she depleted her own defences, and it had become horribly clear that in a battle as one-sided as this, defence was the best she was going to do.  
  
Sure enough, by the very end of the hasting she was on the back foot and dancing to her foe's tune again. The next three movements were all too predictable and completely unavoidable: a feint, a kick and a swipe to take her head.  
  
Somehow, it didn't. For a moment it seemed Winter's two swords had blocked it just in time - but they _weren't there_ , and the pain in Winter's wrist told her in no uncertain terms how they'd been knocked from her grasp. Without missing a beat a gauntleted hand harshly grabbed her wrist to yank her in, and she was brought nose-to-nose with the mask keeping her enemy incognito.  
  
It was more ridiculous up close than Winter could have imagined. An ivory crest, top-heavy, riven with scarlet and apparently trumpeting a good foot of black pelage; a Fang mask designed by a preschooler. Please. She wanted to play _Grimm_ , did she?  
  
Winter felt for herself in her fingernails and let free the claws behind them.  
  
The blow seemed to take the woman by surprise, batting her aside with more ease than either of them would have expected. Offence only made so good a defence. It almost knocked the mask from the her face, almost. Instead, when she swung back around, sword already resheathed, the attempt had left three ragged lines tearing diagonally across the enamel. It rather ruined the symmetry. Good.  
  
Something in the way the woman's head bowed - the way her body bunched, tensed - told Winter how clearly the beowolf had manifested. A snarl rested unreleased in her mouth, begging her teeth to sharpen again. She licked the cold from her lips. Tempting. But it was surprise that had won that - a beowolf alone would never be enough.  
  
Winter reached into her lungs, where her army awaited.  
  
The woman remained in that taut, slightly hunched position, near motionless, and all of that should have suggested fear. Yet there was nothing of the sort - worryingly rather than reassuringly unthreatening. The light of the glyph wheeling behind Winter lit the bone of her mask, threw into focus the crevices newly left in it as if they were a trophy.  
  
A sound not enough like a laugh, and when she spoke, the tone was impossible to place. "What a _waste_."  
  
With a furious scream Winter released her flock, her mind's eye already dividing them and plotting out their paths, ensuring that when her foe destroyed one swell at least two others would round on her from behind. This was the very last Winter had, she had to make it count, and that meant no less than perfection. As the flock surrounded their target in a haze of white and blue, she felt - incredulously - that she might just have it.  
  
The woman did not unsheathe.  
  
Only walked, with considerable effort and dauntless determination, through the blizzard of hard light, a shadow almost rendered invisible by the brightness. They surely whittled at her, surely did _something_ \- and Winter, noticing the red light beginning to bleed out from the scabbard, realised too late that they did, that they _had_ , that _she_ had--  
  
A swing, not meant to hit but to throw its target back with the force waiting within it. Winter went flying across the roof, hitting the floor too hard. The crunch was not just displaced snow. _Red and black_. The colours of blood.  
  
Winter saw the faint radiance of her flock dissipate through her fluttering eyelids. Steps growing louder and nearer, steady, _unstoppable_ , not even pausing with the whistled sound of a sword unsheathing too close.  
  
Spiked shoes planted themselves heavily atop Winter's wrists - not enough to pierce, but more than enough to keep aura occupied if it tried to revive itself. The luminous blade at her neck, resting its point just below the apple, close enough that a mere breath would have skin nicked, saw to the rest of her. _Move, and die_.  
  
  
And then - nothing.  
  
  
No questions, not even a gloat. The blade stayed right where it was.  
  
Unable to gulp, Winter forced a blink instead. Why, after all the ruthless efficiency of the fight, see fit to delay now?  
  
Seconds passed and still nothing more. Just Winter, pinned to the ground and a millimetre from death, and her would-be killer looming silently above. Bizarrely intimate, despite all the distance their respective positions should provide them. Without aura, Winter felt naked - and the woman, thighs bared like the cold was an afterthought, stood near enough to give off scent. _This_ was play. If Winter held her life in less esteem she might have tutted. How very like--  
  
Her blood froze in her veins. No; she recognised that scent. Something visceral, blood-and-eiderdown, normally hidden miles beneath layers of sweat and grain spirit. Here, it was immediate - and _fresh_.  
  
Her expression must have changed, because her foe saw fit to lean down a little further, leather creaking distressingly with the movement. Then she straightened again - " _Ohhh…_ " - made a note somewhere between a purr and a chuckle, low and dark and only borderline human, just warm enough that Winter could imagine the heat of it on her skin. The sound transitioned into something else, murmurs, mutters, _words_ , not any language Winter knew. She looked again at the mask and saw where the eyeholes were, that the eyes gazing back were exactly the wrong shade of red.  
  
She tried to speak - the blade deftly slipped from her throat to her chin, leaving a slender, decorative line in its wake. She gasped with the sting.  
  
" _Heel, wolf_."  
  
Something in the woman's voice - a quaver, not remotely fearful, dulling the blade of her tongue - belied how unnatural banter was to her. One foot pressed harder, splitting the leather. Dangerous, when the wrist in question lacked a shield. Winter wasn't sure she liked it.  
  
A very pregnant pause.  
  
They both felt the decision before it had been made. The blade suddenly flared with anticipation, Winter shut her eyes to her own death--  
  
The sound of rent air. Wind carrying copper blasted at Winter from her left, and before she could fully register what her eyes only just opened in time to see, the masked woman had walked entirely out of the world.  
  
  
It was a full minute before the soldier's brain clicked back into familiar functionality.  
  
Her first thought was that her uniform would need a damn good clean. Hip still thrummed with the disagreeable warmth of a muscle insisting that it had been torn in two. She stood up to prove it wrong, found the movement far too easy for her body's liking. There was nothing natural about aura, she reminded herself as it started to swell once more, quietening the complaints of its mortal host.  
  
Satisfied that everything was operational, her mind turned to her surroundings. There was no denying there had been a battle here, snow disrupted messily wherever she looked. That was far more likely to be the source of the dampness against her skin, much as it felt like blood. Indeed, while there were greyer patches that could not have been shadow or bared concrete, Winter felt confident that she had lost very little. A shame, considering.  
  
Finally she turned her thoughts to the most pressing matter. Legs all too certain of themselves she moved to the space where the woman had last been, nothing left to mark the departure, and bent to pick up her swords. Before her, the monotonous rise-and-fall of Mantle, every building two storeys shorter that it sought to be. The mauve of the clouded sky set the world firmly in grey. The place _demanded_ stagnation.  
  
Winter had always been a quick learner and a difficult student, never one to settle or coast. She was used to possessing facts, analysing them, making them useful. But for the first time in a very long time she was left with the uncomfortable, unbidden want that was _knowledge_. Knowledge that the woman could have left at any time, could have avoided the pursuit altogether, and chose not to.  
  
The backs of her fingers brushed through the empty space by her neck where loose hair might once have lain; moved across to the new scar at her throat, thumbnail tracing the seam of it. _Change_. Things like Winter, soul-carved corpses both hollow and too whole, were built on change. They hungered after it. Slew the most monstrous horrors so that they might feed on that horror and remake it in their own image.  
  
She breathed herself out across the rooftops, as if mere breath could find and return to her what had slipped from her grasp that night.  
  
No matter. Winter was a Huntress, wasn't she?  
  
It was only right that she have something to hunt.

**Author's Note:**

> Now someone go and write this pairing properly. Rough and ready's never going to do them justice.


End file.
